Kodak DC4800

Kodak has a strong pedigree when it comes to making budget digital cameras, but this hasn't always resulted in award-winning higher-end models. This trend was continued this month, with its DC3400 model picking up an Honourable Mention, but the DC4800 failing to challenge for major honours.

With its 3.1 megapixel CCD, the DC4800's maximum resolution has been increased to an unusual 2,160 « 1,440 pixels. The camera's styling is also unusual: it boasts gunmetal-grey colouring, pop-up flash and manual exposure and aperture dials. Looks aside, this camera is fairly well equipped. Its 1.8in LCD delivers a quick refresh rate and is of a high enough resolution to check captured images. It also makes the menu system easy to navigate.

The 3x optical zoom is another useful feature and the manual mode gives plenty of control over the DC4800's picture-taking process. You can set the shutter speed, aperture, ISO level, exposure compensation, sharpness and white balance manually for each picture. However, the settings are more limited than on cameras like the Nikon CoolPix 990, as there are only three f-stops, and the shutter speed has to be set through the menus, which is a tedious process. The manual aperture size selector dial lets you take pictures in aperture priority mode, but there's no shutter priority mode.

In continuous shooting mode, the DC4800 can capture four pictures at highest quality and 16 at lowest. Depending on the quality set, between two and five frames are taken each second. The 16Mb CompactFlash card is capable of storing 15 photos at maximum resolution and 47 at lowest. We liked the lithium ion battery, which is recharged when the included AC adaptor is plugged in, and this also acts as a power supply for the camera.

We were also impressed by the image quality in our outdoor test. The Kodak optics certainly did their job well, as detail capture rivalled the more expensive cameras, and focus over the entire frame was excellent. Evidence of JPEG artefacts, overexposure and some noticeable colour fringing marred the image, however. Indoors, the DC4800 produced an overexposed image, but colour balance and focus were generally very good.

Compared to the slightly cheaper Fujifilm FinePix 4700 Zoom, the DC4800 delivers similar image quality, offering a little more in terms of manual control options. For just £6 more, however, you can get the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-S70, which has a better feature set, superior all-round image quality and is the better all-round deal.